Real estate is, by and large, a local business—except where distribution warehouses are concerned.

That’s likely a driving force behind the talks between ProLogis and AMB Property Corp. as the real-estate investment trusts hammer out details of what would be the biggest merger of publicly traded real-estate companies in years.

Both companies develop and manage the giant, low-slung, boxy buildings you see on the side of the Interstate and near airports and seaports. But unlike most landlords, who draw many of their tenants from local companies, AMB and ProLogis cater to multinational corporations like Amazon and Nike that rely on the global movement of goods for their business.

The two landlords have been able to attract these big users of warehouses by offering them space near key hubs around the world, from Newark and Long Beach to Rotterdam and Tokyo. Together, ProLogis and AMB—the two biggest U.S.-based publicly traded warehouse landlords—would have an even more dominant global footprint.

To recap: we reported Wednesday afternoon that AMB and ProLogis were near a merger, sending share prices of both companies soaring in after-hours trading. Late Wednesday, both companies put out virtually identically worded press releases acknowledging that talks were underway “regarding a potential merger of equals.”

The deal, they said, would combine the two companies in an “all-stock, at-market transaction, based upon the unaffected trading prices of the two companies’ stock prior to media reports of a possible merger.”

Analysts have been quick to point out that the combined enterprise could benefit from its huge global platform. That could alter market dynamics in places where the new company would own a lot of space. Macquarie Capital analyst Ki Bin Kim wrote that the combined company would own about 10% of the industrial space in Southern California, “which is small, but in specific neighborhoods this percentage may increase, increasing pricing power.”

Over at Deal Journal, Shira Ovide has more on Wall Street’s early take on the potential deal. Both companies shot up in New York Stock Exchange morning trading, with ProLogis up about 10% and AMB up about 8% just after 10 a.m. on Thursday.